CEO Jen-Hsun Huang told the assembled analysts that, “We are no longer a chip company, I can tell you that. We are no longer a chip company. The fact that we are a member of the Fabless Semiconductor Association just seems weird to me. We are a visual computing company. Whatever it takes to deliver that product … you’re going to see some wonderful things.”

Contraryto analyst skepticism about Nvidia’s Tegra mobile chip business, Huang offered a rousing defense of the company’s products and technology, laying out a vision for a world of mobile computing beyond just smartphones, including robots, cars, wearable technology, and vacuum cleaners:

What about Tegra? When people think about tegra, they think about mobile. When people think about mobile, they think about phones. The future of mobile is not just phones. If you go forward far enough, mobile simply means a very, very small computer that’s energy efficient that’s connected to the cloud. Your car is obviously mobile, your vacuum cleaner is going to be mobile. You actually can’t do a better job than a robotic vacuum cleaner, which does it better in the middle of the night, which knows where the dirt is, that just goes and does it. Mobile computers will come in all kinds of sizes. Some you wear, some you hang on your wall. There will be mobile computers within mobile computers. Just like in the beginning of the car industry, it was all black and four doors.

Our strategy is three fold. The first part is this: It is vital that we bring the real capability of our company, which is our GPUs, to bear. This is the work, the exquisite work, of thousands of man-years. Billions of dollars have been invested in this architecture. No engine produces better GPUs than this one. It is vital that we find a way to bring that to mobile. Tegra K1, is the world’s first version of our Tegra where you can say, no one but Nvidia could build this.

The next thing, we believe Android, long-term, is going to be a very important game platform. How could it not be? And how could we not have made it happen? Shield is our long-term investment in building the android platform into a world-class gaming platform. Shield is a world-class gaming platform. That’s one example of us focusing on PC gaming, and then all OEMs want GeForce in their systems. It’s the same strategy here. Focus on Android, and then eveyrone will want Tegras on their phones.

Third, be a 100% market share company in a zero-billion-dollar market when it started. That’s how all great leaders built their companies. Ten years ago people told me the car industry is the worst industry in the world. First of all, it’s not that big, because you’re selling a chip. Second the product lifecycles are forever. And third, the quality stnadards, incredible. That describes almost verbatim when we first crated nvidia and came into graphics industry. One of your headlines back then said, A wonderful company in a terrrible neighborhood. One of you guys actuallyy wrote that. Well, the PC turned out not to be such a bad neighborhood after all. Because you can change the neighborhood. You can tell other people to move out. The car industry is going to be so important because it is going to be the most important robot we own. We believe cars in future will be computers first, on four wheels.

So, the three points to the strategy are, One, unify the architecture and bring our big muscle to bear; Two, focus on markets, cultivate the markets that we believe will happen; Three, imagine new applications, revolutionize new applications. I think you’re seeing the results of that.

Our GeForce is synonymous with PC gaming, our Tegra is synonymous with Android gaming. These are going to be the two biggest gaming markets in ten years.

Huang went on to describe automotive electronics as a computer problem, with intense software content. He discussed his own Tesla (TSLA) automobile, which constantly gets “over the air” (OTA) software updates. “It’s just going to get smarter and smarter,” he said of cars of the future, as they are connected to the network and use machine learning. He also mentioned BMW‘s forthcoming “i8” — “I just can’t wait!” — featuring Nvidia’s chips.

Huang said “virtual prototyping” was an important technique that is going to change the way his and other companies develop products. He included things such as virtual simulations of car crashes to cut down on actually performing crash simulations in the physical world. He also referenced 3-D printing, saying it would save companies money. “We use 3-D printing in our company, it is completely, utterly revolutionary in the way it works.” He predicted the phenomenon would drive use of 3-D simulation tools.

Huang noted that it had the endorsement for its “Grid” massively scalable computing technology from both International Business Machines (IBM) and VMware (VMW).

Huang closed his presentation with a slide offering four bullet points that he said constituted the investment rationale for the company (click for larger image):

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There are 2 comments

MARCH 25, 2014 4:59 P.M.

Jeff wrote:

Nvidia, is the "Company of the Future" their chips are far advanced than any competitor, cheap, low energy consumption, high performance and design to run in many devices, smartphones, tablets, PCs, Cars, Robots, Super computers, basically any device that can be mobile or connected to the cloud.

NVIDIA ROCKS!!!

MARCH 25, 2014 8:56 P.M.

@jeff wrote:

thanks Jeff but Huang just said you're NOT a chip company. Glad to hear the employees are behind the speech though.

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Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.